Intel has been working lately on "Atomising" the Android mobile OS in lieu of the upcoming Froyo (or 2.2) release so that it can be installed natively on x86 devices-- Atom-based netbooks in particular. Says Renee James, Senior VP for software and services at Intel: "Our expectation is that [native x86 Android] will be based on the Froyo release and will be available this summer to developers... [it] wasn't tremendously difficult, as we have a lot experience in Linux". The fun is supposed to arrive for developers this summer.

Who can say "Intel stole the netbook market from ARM"? Netbooks are still laptops no matter what the marketing people said. Intel has always played in that field. Was ARM in the game? Had ARM initiated the netbook market or been one of its pioneer actors, maybe you could have said "it's a shame ARM didn't keep its market share". Even then, markets usually involve several competitors, not landlords and thieves.

The reason why I said what i said was simply because ARM is perfect for netbooks: it's cheap, lower powered, moderately spec'ed and ultra-portable.

You stated that netbooks are essentially laptops, which is true in a broader sense of the term. But the reality is that the two devices perform very different roles. Netbooks were never intended to be "laptops" in the traditional sense, but rather a cheap hub for online services and an office suite. Where as laptops these days are as powerful as many desktops and are usually brought to perform desktop-type processing while offering portability.

So taking the above into account, there's no reason why ARM shouldn't have had more success.

That said, I do think that ARM wasn't entirely to blame. Some of the Linux distro's bundled were so poor that it put off many people and then when MS entered into the market, they had the money to subsidise Windows so much that it became doubly unattractive to run anything other than Windows XP on x86.

Now it's looking too late for ARM to recover as Intel already have optimised netbook CPUs out there to compete with ARM (where initially there was only the Celleron which was virtually no competition to ARM).

So while I don't entirely blame ARM for losing the netbook battle, they should still have had a much greater market share in that product line than they currently do.

As far as I know, ARM netbooks are not common. I still have to see one in my town here in France. An ARM laptop may exist but I haven't heard of it.

That's exactly my point though. They could have and should have been more common.
The netbook market is an ideal market space for ARM to flurrish, but it just felt like they were held back.

They aren't perfect, they have a major downside which is compatibility.

Even with netbooks you still run into issues with plug-ins, namely Flash.

But Flash is currently being ported which will make ARM a lot more appealing to OEMs.

Compatibility isn't that big of an issue with netbooks:
* Linux already runs on ARM
* There's already a plethora open source apps out there that can read 99.99% of office documents (many of which may already have been ported to ARM)
* There's already countless media player applications, both specifically for ARM and open source that can be ported.
* Websites mostly use open standards - and the iPhone / iPad don't have Flash either. so even that example of yours isn't entirely fair.

So, for what netbooks are used for, compatibility really isn't the issue.
But i agree that ARM isn't perfect, but then nothing in life is truly perfect

The nice thing about ARM is that it is forcing Intel to keep their Atom line extremely low priced. You can get an Atom/motherboard combo for around $65.

Nice for consumers in the short term maybe. But in the long term Intel's pricing model is harmful as it's encouraging a monopoly.